Blogs on California

Cal Joy is Edutopia's Director of Web Development and resident pancake breakfast maker extraordinaire. She spent a weekend in LA to attend the 826 reading, and had this to report.

Baking a book takes time. 826LA intern Neekta Khorsand has worked with Los Angeles student, Brian Young and his forty-three fellow student authors on location at Dorsey High for several months. Their delicious creation is From the Couch to the Kitchen: A Book to Indulge In. 826ers believe in meeting students where they are academically, providing one-on-one attention, and understanding students' individual learning histories. Differentiated instruction focuses on each student, getting the right ingredients needed to nurture their skills. Approaching all learners the same academically doesn't work. 826 writing programs focus on where students are in their learning process. Using individually prepared instruction, 826LA takes a custom approach connecting each student's skill level to an appropriate assignment.

Editor's Note: Today's guest blogger is Amy Whittaker, one of the co-producers of the STEMposium event.

On April 1st, a sold-out crowd of 250 students, teachers and civic, business, philanthropic, nonprofit, education and technology leaders flocked to the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco for STEMposium^TM - a celebration of excellence in K-12 STEM education innovation presented by the nonprofit EnCorps Teachers Program with co-host Citizen Schools.

Editor's Note: Today's guest blogger is Don Doehla, French teacher and instructional coach at Vintage High School in Napa, California. Don recently stepped up to become the new facilitator of our World Languages group. He's got some great ideas for teaching world languages, including the use of project-based learning. He shares a few of these tips today. We hope you'll join him in the World Languages group as well.

The world may be small and flat, but it is also multilingual, multicultural, and more and more, it is an interconnected world. Consequently, cross cultural communicative competencies are increasingly important for mutual understanding and cooperation - how is that for some alliteration?! Our students' need to be able to communicate with their neighbors, here and abroad, is increasing with every moment which passes! The borders separating our countries are diminishing in importance as the global culture emerges. The definition of who my neighbor is has changed as well. No longer are we isolated from what is happening across the globe. Recent events demonstrate this quite well! Examples abound for everyone on the planet. We must be able to communicate well and proficiently across the kilometers which separate us.

This post was originally written for my website. Since then, I have received so much kindness from my online network of teachers;